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Downtown Merchants to meet Wednesday

Group wants to help rebound from Royal Gorge Fire

After last week's Downtown Merchants meeting to brainstorm ideas to help recover from the Royal Gorge Fire, the group will again at 8 a.m. Wednesday in Veterans Park to begin facilitating them.

The merchants came up with a variety of ideas at the previous meeting, including providing transportation from the train depot to the downtown, providing information about the downtown and activities at the train depot, joining Cañon City and Florence marketing, adding a Willy Wonka display downtown, contacting TV stations to do a show on Cañon City on the rebuilding and working together, as well as having each individual business develop Facebook and social media communications.

Also, the merchants can advertise more than just the big three tourist attractions, think about opening Royal Gorge Regional Museum on Monday and Tuesday, co-op packages of businesses, develop Groupons and tour the town as part of Heritage Tours.

"(The merchants are looking at ways) to attract tourists to the downtown and how to get local people shopping downtown," said City Administrator Doug Dotson. "The city's role is to help support them in whatever efforts they feel appropriate. Ultimately, it's going to be the merchants that's going to have to come up with the ideas and carry them forward. We'll help them in anyway we can."

Everyone with ideas and how to implement them is invited to attend the second meeting to help with the continuation of improving the economy and businesses in the area.